A journal dedicated to truth, freedom of speech and radical spiritual consciousness. Our mission is the liberation of men and women from oppression, violence and abuse of any kind, interpersonal, political, religious, economic, psychosexual. We believe as Fidel Castro said, "The weapon of today is not guns but consciousness."

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Dhoruba Bin-Wahad on the Crisis of the Pan African Intellectual

*U. S. AFRICAN AND MIDEAST POLICIES: WAR AS FOREIGN AID AND REGIME CHANGE AS DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION*By Dhoruba al-Mujahid Bin-WahadAfricans in the Diaspora are in a crisis of conscience searching for what it means to be "African centered" or Pan-African, and citizens of Racist Nation-states with histories of Imperial domination. We are confronted today with "New Age Imperialism" where national elites collaborate to oppress the poor and hungry of the planet rather than wage war with each other over the control of strategic resources. This global convergence of interests has found its natural opposition in the international character of the Muslim Ummah.*The US and Race based Democracy - “Democratic Fascism”*.In the U.S. where over 2.5 million American citizens are locked away in prison and another 15 plus million owners of major “felony” convictions, the African-American population and other national “minorities” of non-European background are subjected to a contrived system of fascism masquerading as “democracy” - a political and social system of police and corporate control, a police state with unprecedented power (after 9/11 terrorist attacks) that employs a "National Security" rationale to conceal its crimes of “rendition”, torture (enhanced interrogation), indefinite detention, and targeted assassinations . Like most modern “national-security” states, U.S. policies are most closely associated with its perceived “national interests” primarily involving access to strategic resources and “trade”. The West’s bogus advocacy of supporting individual freedom by supporting “Democratic regime change” in its former colonial territories mask not only their own internal inequalities based on race, religion and gender, but conceal the often violent cooptation of legitimate revolutionary people’s movements that oppose entrenched oligarchies, Autocrats, while marginalizing and demonizing Islamic based anti-imperialist forces across Africa and Mid-East. Islam has replaced the specter of “communist global domination” as the foremost threat to global Finance Capitalism and Western global domination. That the West’s perceives opposition to neo-imperialist diplomacy in secular dimensions, characterizing this opposition as the “clash of civilizations) is not without historical basis.Up until the overthrow of the western stooge Shah Reza Palhavi of Iran, a strictly Islamic based mass movement had never overthrown a modern non-secular Nation State backed by the Western Imperial powers. Needless to say the Iranian “revolutions” sent shock waves throughout the region and shook regional Sunni comprador classes (Oil Sheikdoms) across the region to their reactionary roots. But to the masses of Muslims on the streets of Arab capitals the Iranian revolution was a ray of hope - but its Shia dimension served the US and Europe’s historical fallback tactic of divide and conquer . We now see how effective the West’s early divide and conquer strategy of containment has been and how it has the region tittering on the brink of war. Many Arab Sunni rulers, with US blessings, covertly intensified their alignment with the European settler-state of Israel to contain Iranian geopolitical influence even as Israel gears up for military strikes against the Islamic Republic. US and NATO troops are stationed in Muslim lands, military bases across the Mid-East are designed to project Western military power into the region. All this a consequence of US divide and conquer fear tactics in the region.With the support for US militarism abroad (war on terror) a fundamental principle of both the Right wing and “moderates” in the US congress , it is little surprise that white American politicians are also major supporters and instigators of anti-Islamic fervor both inside and outside the US. Because the ramifications of “the war on terror” has disproportionately affected the immigrant Muslim population in the US (African-American Muslims have lived under religious, racial, and political repression for decades) U.S. military and diplomatic actions in Arab countries of North Africa, Iraq, Syria, as well as in Pakistan and India have all been characterized as unique, untypical resistance or an “Arab Spring". This definition of uprisings across Muslim North Africa by the western media and westernized Arab intellectuals are aimed at one thing. Dividing the Muslim Ummah along racial and historical lines, while isolating African Muslims from the general process of Pan-African unity and democratization.The use of the contextual term "Arab Spring" to characterize the mass uprising of NORTH AFRICANS against the rule of despotic Arab elites is purposely and artfully crafted to discourage sub-Saharan Black Africa and its Muslim populations from emulating their North African counterparts while appealing to the “Anti-Arab” sentiments among many Pan-Africans and within the Black Diaspora. ECOWAS and the *A*frican *U*nion’s recent support of French military intervention in Mali and as US surrogate in Somalia, and else where on the African continent are testimony to how eagerly Africa’s political elite are utilizing the “West’s war terror” to secure their positions and prop up their power while ignoring persecuted and marginalized Muslim minority populations. In countries like Nigeria the US is on the ground supporting the Christian dominated government’s “anti-terrorist actions” in the North of the country against an Islamic insurgency. In Somalia, the US drone war has spilled over into neighboring countries, like Eritrea, Al-Yemen and has led to tribal unrest in Northern Kenya. While the US and its European Allies seemed appalled by the Muslim insurgencies in the North of Mali (consistently failing to mentioned that this crisis was long in the making and connected to the Western European’s deposing of Libya’s Ghadaffi and the silent collusion of Black Africa’s leaders) both the US and Europe are neither horrified or outraged by events in the Eastern Congo.*Africa, A War Zone Without End*Nearly 3 million people have died in Congo in a four-year war over Coltan, a heat-resistant mineral ore widely used in cellphones, laptops and playstations and other strategic minerals. Eighty percent of the world's coltan reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Often dismissed as an ethnic war, the conflict in the Congo is really over natural resources sought by foreign corporations -- diamonds, tin, copper, gold, but mostly coltan”In an article titled “Why the U.S. Won’t Help”, a Nairobi newspaper explained, ‘Right from the days of the Cold War, Western governments have been comfortable with a situation in which African regimes squandered meager resources on the instruments of war, borrowing from the West to finance domestic consumption. The war in the Congo and the countries involved in it are a case in point’... In 1998, the State Department licensed commercial weapons sales by U.S. manufacturers to sub-Saharan Africa worth up to $64 million, on top of the $12 million in government-to-government deliveries that year. These figures have quadrupled since 1998 and the region is no closer to stability than it was when Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the US, French and Belgians in 1960s.The hypocrisy of the US and Europe asking Africa’s political elite to develop and democratize while cutting levels of non-military international aid and increasing weapons and military training to the continent’s Armies does not seem to have registered with African-Americans, neither those (Pan-Africans) who claim solidarity with the current crop of African leaders, or those elected to public office. This lack of outspoken opposition to US militarization of Africa, especially under the Obama administration is inexcusable and attributable to the uncritical and unprincipled support of the Obama regime by African-Americans. Moreover, Obama’s policy of destabilization and “democratic regime change” of governments it is at odds with suggest that there is little real commitment to developing human resources and a new “partnership” with Africa, the U.S. needs to redirect the focus away from strengthening military capacity, coopting ethnic and national elites and more toward promoting human development in Africa.

Rudolph Lewis on the Crisis of the Pan African Intellectual

We must admit honestly Pan Africans do not have a military to counter Europe, USA and or China. Or even a rag-tag army of jihadists. We only have words of caution and awareness of the dangers of foreign powers on the African continent, whether they are Christian or Muslims. Pan Africans are talkers, theorists, not men of action (military soldiers). . . .

The situation shows also the weakness of African states and of the African Union. . . . The present Mali crises are the result of the Western overthrow of the Libyan government. A number of events would not have occurred if the coup and the assassination of Qaddafi had not occurred:

1) The Benghazi embassy attack 2) the internal breakup of Mali, and 3) the Algerian gas production plant. . . . So African states, Europe, and USA are reaping the whirlwind of their decision to dislodge Qaddafi. Libya will be much weaker than it was. Thus the entire region north, east and west of African states will be less stable, opening the doors for more extensive interventions in African affairs. This has been anticipated for sometime.

Army General William E. "Kip" Ward stands tall as imperialism's shining black prince. He has been anointed to head Africom, a rapidly unfolding plan to establish an expanded western military presence in Africa for the purpose of securing domination of the continent's oil and other natural resources. (Okay, okay - so they claim Africom is designed to quell internal strife and fight terrorism. But none of us believe that.)

What is the revolutionary Pan African position on the Euro-American-Chinese occupation of Africa?

And what can the Diaspora do to stop the military campaigns for the mineral riches of Africa? Do we have drones, nukes, what? Can we tell African heads of state who are now in league with the Euro-Americans not to join the West in its supposed role of stopping the Islamic revolution? Perhaps we should make clear that the Arab Islamists, including the African Arab Islamists, are as much a problem as the Euro-Americans and Chinese, although the Chinese role appears to be purely economic, which is

nice if there is parity of trade between the Afro-Asians, but too often Chinese made goods destabilize the local economy with pricing and shoddy goods, often imitation cloth such as Kenti in Ghanna.

But what can we do, those intellectuals, Pan Africanists and revolutionary nationalists here in the belly of the beast. Dr. Nathan Hare and Kwame Toure argued over whether our focus should be to cut off the tentacles or the head of the serpent. Of course our focus must be the home front where our people are suffering greatly, jobless, ignorant, incarcerated, drugged out, diseased, etc. Think globally but act locally. What can we do down here on the ground in Babylon? If you know, teach! If you don't know learn! The nature of events in Africa is complex with major issues of corruption, religion, tribalism, imperialism from a myriad sources, European, American, Arab, Asian, etc.

When will Africa be for the Africans? We see reactionary forces occupying Africa. America is placing American troops in 35 African countries. France is now in Mali to stop the Islamists, with American support of course. But does it matter to us whether the Euro-Americans or the Islamists occupy the land, both are known to be devils and destroyers of African culture.

And what shall we say about the African governments in cahoots with the imperialists or globalists?

The African politicians appear in lockstep with the colonizers and crusaders seeking control of Africa's precious minerals. From the neocolonialism of the last decades, we seek they are in the mood to make deals with the devil. After all, Kwame Nkruma taught us neocolonialism is colonialism playing possum.

The African nations collaborating with the occupiers are in the tradition of those who sold us to slavers.

In many of these nations, the former revolutionaries have turned reactionary, yes, in league with the devil. We can almost say no one in this African quagmire is without sin. Who are the good guys, the African leaders, the Euro-Americans, Arab Islamists, who?

Perhaps we can say the common people are the good guys, exploited and robbed of their labor and natural resources at every turn. How shall they gather the energy to seize people's power? The African bourgeoise is not about to give up power to the masses, thus the masses must fight internal forces and external forces of every stripe, European, American, Asian, Arab. This will employ sophistication and a broad understanding of all the forces involved, political, economic, religious.

About Me

Truth will not make you rich, but it will make you free.--Francis Bacon

Marvin has been ignored and silenced,like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. He's one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today --Rudolph Lewis, Chickenbones.